Archive of Our Own

Abbot doesn’t give too much of himself away at work. Samira doesn’t hear stories about him the way she hears about Robby; the trail of endlessly exasperated yet understanding women who are much too beautiful that he leaves in his wake, or his penchant for cherry danishes, or how much he spent on that stupid fucking motorbike.

She knows Abbot in broad strokes: workaholic, combat medic, widower, the brother to an indeterminate number of siblings. Sometimes he is on the roof when she arrives in the morning, but hasn’t collected enough data to establish whether it is ritual, solace or mildly dangerous. She’s seen him drink the break room coffee indiscriminately: black, with creamer, with half and half; has caught herself staring at his lips wrapped around a straw, elbow to elbow with Shen and their matching Dunkin’ cups. Even out of scrubs it is as if he has a uniform: plain t-shirts, two identical Carhartt work jackets, one navy, one black, no sports paraphernalia, no alma mater printed on a crew neck, only the sole army issued backpack emblazoned with his surname. If he has hobbies she does not know. Samira wonders if he returns each morning to a home as empty as hers, how he fills his days. He gives no indication of a life outside the walls of the hospital, but he must have one, a life well lived, at some time. Surely he cannot be as lonely as she is.

She gets into his car after a shared night shift, after some cajoling, kindness following a long night. It’s some kind of compact SUV, a newer model, dark grey, pristine clean. She is saved from the awkwardness of the situation by her sheer exhaustion, is much too tired to be on high alert, to consider that this is the first place she has been truly alone with one of her attendings before. He passes her his phone, she types in her address, heavy-lidded, and hands it back. The car comes to life, music blasting, she blinks, he apologises, turns it down but not all the way off as they back out of the lot, his hand on the back of her headrest, practiced. She doesn’t recognise the song, it's already half way through, must have been playing when he arrived for his shift. The next song starts, it’s an album, she deduces, he doesn’t try to interrupt her silence, she keeps her eyes closed, head tilted back, this one has strings, a falsetto. After breakfast – or dinner? Whatever the hell scrambled eggs are at 8:30am when you have been awake for nineteen hours count as – before she tries to achieve some uninterrupted sleep, Samira types In Rainbows, kind of weird, also kind of nice, find that one good song into her notes app.

Two weeks later he has a new air freshener dangling from his rearview mirror, sharp, kind of peppery but not unpleasant. This time he’s been listening to an audiobook, she only catches a few words before he swiftly pauses it and types something into his phone. It’s a playlist this time, on low as they discuss a few cases from their shift, the chaos they escaped from, were forced away from so they didn’t pull a double. Abbot, she knows is just like her, will often work until he is cajoled out of the ED by Dana, or politely nudged by Al-Hashimi. She accepts the ride because he tells her that he doesn’t trust that she won’t immediately do a u-turn at the bus stop and try to badge right back in. She didn’t think he really knew her very well, this truth sits uncomfortably. Tom Waits, she adds to her notes, has an annoying fucking voice.

She has given up with polite refusal, finds a tube of aquaphor in the little door pocket that she does not remember placing there but is definitely hers. He can’t make intense, unfaltering eye contact with her when he asks her how she is feeling after a shift, she can leave little white lies in her wake as he drives, can tell him she’s okay, and can’t be stared down into changing her answer. She can begin her decompression next to him in a way she can’t on the bus, can shake her hair out of its tight confines, really check in with her body, with her breathing, can allow herself to relax for a short while, the weight of the commute lifted from her seamlessly by Abbot. She is stubborn, but she lets him. 

She likes the mornings with Abbot, looks forward to trying to glean new information about him from what comes out of his speakers. He has become interesting to her in a way so many of her other colleagues just haven’t. She finds herself really wanting to know him, and not understanding why, and further not understanding how to, so she focuses on the music. Sometimes he will allow whatever was playing the night before to continue into the morning, like the shift was just a long pause and he carries the same mood into the day beyond the hospital. Other mornings it will change. Mostly it is men who sound kind of sad, and she can’t tell if they were previously sadder or moderately happier before he skipped the song that he had been listening to. She adds the ones that stand out into her now growing list. Pot Kettle Black by Wilco, Runaway and England by The National, Tinseltown in the Rain (sad 80s), Age of Consent (happier sounding 80s but with sad lyrics), Untitled by Interpol. Maybe he isn’t paying attention to the lyrics, maybe it’s the instruments, the feelings.

It’s five songs to her door if they don’t hit traffic, seven if they do. She looks forward to the traffic. Likes the rhythm that he taps out on his steering wheel, unendingly patient with Pittsburgh’s morning traffic. Love and Happiness, Al Green. Violent Femmes (fun, weird), Lullaby, The Cure. On their sixth drive together he suggests that she could play something for a change, Samira politely declines. Abbot explains that he was the youngest growing up, that his music taste was always drowned out by his sisters’ on long road trips, and that he has a hard time giving up control of the music now to anyone. It’s a throwaway comment, tongue in cheek, but she thinks about it until she drifts off to sleep. He offered it to her, it must mean something. It doesn’t, she eventually decides, heartbeat skipping in her chest as she tries to remove her mind from her shift. It was run of the mill, she shouldn’t be feeling like this. 

You can’t tell someone that you don’t really like music, because that is weird, that is a really strange thing to say. Samira likes music, but she doesn’t like it the way Abbot does. She lets the Spotify algorithm do its thing, never makes playlists, was called a ‘monster’ by her undergrad roommate for adding all of the songs she liked into one playlist called Songs. If she needs to concentrate, it’s classical. When she feels nostalgic she listens to playlists other people have made for the movies she grew up on, artists her baba liked when he was young, when he was alive and played piano. She doesn’t have a favourite artist, and has never thought about it before now. Music doesn’t save lives, not practically, not really. Podcasts keep her company on the bus, she can always be learning.

Jack doesn’t need the map any more, she suspects he didn’t need it after their first carpool together. She averts her eyes from his dashboard when text messages pop through, mostly, sometimes, she tries. Starts to learn the names, the characters that fill his life this way; the names of his sisters, the group chat he is a member of, pineapple pizza 🤢🍍, that consists of him and three of his nieces. Daniel can take a look at it, at around 9:45, Sally wants to know if he is “in for Saturday”, his therapist? Maybe physio? She isn’t sure, needs to push their session back an hour, he’s sorry, does that work? She isn’t trying to invade his privacy, if he cared his phone would be on do not disturb. Surely. Springsteen has sad songs?

She isn’t good at small talk when she’s not doctoring, doesn’t know how to give any kind of account of herself, finds it tedious, finds that she has nothing to say for herself. She has spent weeks on this subconscious pet project, trying to find him in the pauses between key changes, she wonders what he sees in her. 30 year old female, chronic workaholic, needs to buy cat food. Allows him to drop her off at Aldi, insists that he not wait, jumps out of her skin at the honk of his horn when she walks out of the store, sagging reusable bag and tote bag draped across each shoulder. “It’s raining, Samira, of course I waited for you.”

They don’t see each other much through October, then their schedules sync for two full weeks. He makes a rare appearance on days and his seamless transition is enviable. He picks her up for the first time, she knows not to protest. There is Dunkin’ in the cup holder for her. His hair is still slightly damp, curling at his nape. He is so so so attractive, what the fuck. They make it through a full album for the first time, she finds herself throughout the shift wondering if these small moments in the car together have somehow strengthened their working relationship further. In sync, always in sync. He tells her if she likes Brittany’s voice she should listen to Sound and Color. In the bath, on repeat, she cries to This Feeling.

On a Sunday morning, brilliant blue skies, clear and crisp, he reaches across to the glove compartment, elbow brushing her chest, and pulls out a black storage wallet that he instructs her to unzip. It falls open in her lap and she flips through it, CDs, some that have been liberated from their original cases, some he has burned himself, scrawled with black sharpie, Cabin ‘12, Opening Themes, Summer ‘08. She is instructed to pick one, lingers on a few in different handwriting, Sunshine, Sundays, Cleaning. His wife, he tells her. “Sundays is nice.” She slides it out from the flimsy plastic and passes it to him. Carole King, “Tapestry is a perfect album” apparently. Alannis Morisete (spelling? two T’s? google it) I Never by Rilo Kiley, This Must Be the Place by The Talking Heads (wow).

His nieces think his music taste is boring, he is trying out Olivia Dean. Samira knows her, she likes her new album, is this the first time she has shared a common interest with someone that isn’t medical in months? Probably. It feels good.

After bad shifts he leans further into the miserable sounding men, but on nights that felt lighter he likes jazz, she knows Oscar Peterson, he is impressed. Her baba loved Thelonious Monk.

They both work a double, there is so, so, so, much blood. She tries to wait him out, hides in the bathroom for honestly an embarrassing amount of time, but he’s there at the hub, a promise to Dana to get her home in one piece and then his palm on the small of her back as he guides her through the doors. Warm, insistent. She will not cry, she cannot cry, buckles into his passenger seat and lets out a long shaky breath. He doesn’t start the engine, she can feel his insistent gaze on the side of her face, sweaty hair plastered to her forehead, her cheek. No amount of water splashed has cooled her skin.

“You’re off tomorrow?” He asks.

She responds non verbally, a quiet “mhm,” then braves the pull of his gaze. “I don’t really want to go home just yet,” she admits. His face is open, always a calm in the storm of the ED, the calm in the storm of her mind.

“What do you want to do?” A hand on her knee, she does not jump at the contact, it grounds her. Ask for what you want.

“Can you just… drive a little?”

He loops the city, criss crosses the bridges, turns the volume up, they blast through the Fort Pitt tunnel and then the city opens up for them all at once. She’s never looked at it like this before, like the city is hers. Under the Pressure, The War on Drugs (perfect late night drive) The little turrets blink white on PPG place, purples and yellows glow reflected on the water. It’s beautiful? His hand does not leave her thigh. They leave downtown again, steady along Monongahela River. On ramp, cross, off ramp, repeat. She has the urge to open the window, guitars and drums and helicopter whirs of wind and Jack. It’s exactly what she needed.

Jack takes her home that night, thick socks, guest bed sheets with an expensive thread count. He lingers at his bedroom door, overexplaining the shower to her, here in his home with a UWV sweatshirt on she feels like she finally knows him. She wants to get up and run her fingers over the shelves of records he has in his living room, to touch every single one of his feelings. She can sense him pulling towards her, the persistence, the kindness, it has to be something more. His eyes are so soft. She sleeps long and hard, he’s gone in the morning, instructions for the coffee machine scrawled on the countertop. She calls an uber, doesn’t overstay her welcome.

The only course of action that is logical to her is avoidance, because she is pretty sure she is falling in love with this man and that absolutely cannot be happening. She takes swing shifts for two weeks, returns exclusively to her 45 minute commute, two buses, frames it in her mind as productive time, can go back to listening to The Resus Room, and can spend the time reading the case reports he has sent her. She cannot escape him.  She can’t focus, has grown accustomed to those sacred nights in Jack’s passenger seat. She was getting good at small talk, she was getting good at being a person. She opens the note, sad man music, and starts pulling songs into a playlist. Even without him beside her, his music carries her home, she breathes a little easier.

She acquiesces, she knew she would, follows him to his car a step behind on a frosty December morning. He doesn’t make the move to drive, she doesn’t make the move to fasten her belt. There is something charged in the air, she wants to apologise for avoiding him, she doesn’t want him to think it was intentional, she doesn’t know if he even realised that’s what she has been doing.

“Is it weird that I missed you?” 

“I made a playlist.”

They both blurt simultaneously, he barks out a short laugh. “You what?”

“Jack?”

It happens again.

“I missed driving you home.”

“I made a–... you did?”

“Yeah, Samira, I did.”

“Oh.”

Jack shuffles in his seat, she watches the way he curls in on himself slightly, vulnerable in a way she’s never seen before. “Sorry, is that weird? I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”

Samira reaches out and grabs his arm, “no, you, I… No. I… look.” She opens Spotify on her phone and passes it to him, flits her eyes from the swipe of his thumb against the screen to the way his brow is constantly furrowing and relaxing. “I started making a list, I really don’t know much of anything outside of this building, God that’s embarrassing to say out loud, and I don’t know, I thought I could learn more about you this way. So I made this.”

“Sad man music? Jesus.” 

“You like white men who sound really tortured.” Samira shoots back, taking her phone from him and placing it on the dash.

“Fair.” Jack assents.

“You really feel things through music,” she continues, “it's cool to watch, the way you connect sound to emotion, it flows, it links… you… you said you missed me.”

“We’ve been over this.”

“Yeah but… how Jack? How did you miss me?”

She watches him take a deep breath before he replies, “I just like being with you, I liked our mornings together, and our nights, any time really that I get. I like that you trust me to get you home safe, to be vulnerable with me about your day. I just like you Samira, I really fuckin’ like you.”

“Oh.”

“Is that? Is it too much?”

“No. It’s not, I… yeah. I like you too,” she admits softly, takes his right hand in her left, a palm to palm, a gentle squeeze, “what do we do now?”

“Do you want to put your playlist on?”

“It’s all yours anyway.”